The Redemption of Saturday
by celeria
Summary: You share the same blood. Your twin sister is a brilliant Auror. But who are you? And what sacrifice will you have to make? Focusing on the Patil sisters, especially Parvati. Character death and violence. Implied Hermione/Ron
1. Default Chapter

Very, _very_ much an under-the-wire story (finished June 20, 2003). This is a bit of a continuation to my fic Legacy, although it doesn't have to be read prior to or after it. In fact, it really has nothing to do with Legacy, except that the spell Hermione was researching actually gets used here. I meant to have another story in between Legacy and this one, but with the book coming out so soon, it never materialized. So this can be read in the Legacy-universe, or it can be read independently.

I have committed the atrocity of creating an original character. She might be a Mary Sue. But she does not fall in love with a real character, nor do I want to be anything like her, so maybe she's not. I don't know. You decide.

Ratings, warnings ... oooh boy. Rated at least R for violence, dark themes, character death, and implied (but not graphic) rape of a minor. Pairings include Parvati/Dean and Ron/Hermione, both of which are basically nonexistent. This is the world through Parvati's eyes, and the story of what makes her a true Gryffindor.

* * *

Parvati Patil's little sister was murdered on a Saturday.  Later, when Parvati lay dying, cheek to cold stone, hand grasping out into black nothingness, she watched the planets click around and around the face of the watch that Dean Thomas had given her to mark their one-year anniversary, listening to the movement of time as Friday night passed into Saturday morning.  When Saturn entered the house of Vishnu, she blinked once, brown eyes painfully close to the dungeon floor, and then it was Saturday and she allowed herself to go.

Always before, Saturdays had been their favorite day.  When she and Padma were still in primary school, still living at home, Saturdays were full of fun and excitement and sometimes a few surprises.  Coursework was ignored and plans with friends were never made on Saturdays.  They would wake up in the morning – early, as children always do – to find some glorious surprise waiting for them – sometimes a treasure hunt, sometimes a family game spread out across the whole living room floor.  Once Mum magicked the entire house into a maze that ended only when all three of the Patil girls had made their way to the kitchen, where Mum and Daddy were waiting with beaming smiles and a tiny black kitten.

Sometimes, when she ran her shampoo-covered hands through her little sister's hair, the small black head looked fuzzy and soft like a kitten, and Parvati had to close her eyes to remind herself that Nandin was dead.  She had no way of knowing that he was the first of the Patil family to die.

"Not so hard, Parvati, you're _hurting_ my head!" Pandita insisted, smacking her small, flat palm against the water so efficiently that a wide silver wave rose up and splattered across the front of Parvati's worn pink dress robe.  "Stop it!  I can shampoo my own hair!"

"No, you can't, Pandita.  You never get the front of your head rinsed.  Here, tip your head back, okay?"  Parvati flicked her wand once, and the shower head slunk down obediently from where it had been lounging in the upper corner of the bathroom.  "You need to learn to tilt your head back and not be so scared of getting soap in your eyes, and then you'll be able to shampoo your own hair."

"I can do it myself!" Pandita maintained, reaching for the spray of water.  Her fingers caught around Parvati's wrist, and she yanked suddenly, and before Parvati knew it the water had been turned and she was soaked from forehead to waist.  Pandita stopped and stared guiltily.  "Oops."

"Pandita!"  Parvati reached for a towel and reached first to wipe off her wand, which was emitting little pink and gold sparks in protest.  "See, this is why you can't take your own bath, okay?  Now stop being such a baby."

"I'm not a baby.  I'm almost eleven."  Pandita crossed her small arms over her flat chest and glared venomously at the piles of ice-white bubbles in front of her.  "If everything was normal, I'd be going off to Hogwarts in September.  Then I'd take my own baths!"

"Well, everything's not normal, and there's no Hogwarts for you to go to, so shut up and let me rinse your hair, okay?" Parvati replied, more harshly than she meant to.  Her little sister gave her a sullen look and tipped her head back, and Parvati felt unexpectedly guilty.  "Pandi, I didn't mean to snap at you.  I'm just a little stressed out."

"Yeah."

"You know that Mum and Daddy and I are all very worried about Padma."

"Yeah."

"Aren't you?"

"Sure."

"Pandita, is that all you have to say?" Parvati demanded, muttering "_Aqua desistus_" so that the water turned off and the shower head resumed its position up in the corner.  She reached for the bottle of butterginger conditioner that was Pandita's favorite – Padma's too.  "Your sister is off fighting in a war, and aren't you worried about her?"

Pandita shrugged noncommittally, and Parvati was filled with a sudden, embarrassing urge to shake her.  "I just want her to come home," the little girl replied finally as Parvati threaded her fingers through the smooth, wet cascade of hair that fell to the middle of her back.  "I just want everything to be normal again.  How come we don't do fun things on Saturdays anymore, Parvati?"

"Do you really have to ask?"  Parvati dipped her hands in the water to get the conditioner off, then waved her wand so that she could rinse Pandita's hair.  "Come on, Pandi, grow up.  Padma's not here.  People are dead.  How can you even think about having fun at all?"

"I don't know."  Pandita shrugged and reached for the washcloth so that she could spread soap over her skin as the conditioner drained out of her hair.  "It's just not the same.  You don't tell me stories anymore.  You don't play with my hair and put makeup on me.  And Daddy's never home and Mum just sits around looking scared all the time."

Parvati bit her lip and counted to ten while she sluiced Pandita's hair with water, trying to formulate an appropriate response.  Truth was, her little sister was at least partially right.  Their father _was_ never home, and Mum – she wasn't sure what was going on with Mum, Mum who had always been the dominant and vibrant one when they were kids.  It was Mum who bought them their first toy wands and broomsticks, and Mum who played magical tricks like turning all their father's hair blond in the middle of the night, and Mum who …

"She looks scared," Pandita repeated seriously, sounding very much like Padma as she turned big brown eyes onto her oldest sister.  "How come, Parvati?"

"I don't know, Pandita."  Parvati finished rinsing the little girl's hair.  "Finish your bath and then we'll get you ready for bed, okay?"

Pandita heaved a sigh, which also made her sound much older than ten-going-on-eleven.  Parvati sensed that her sister was sighing not at the prospect of such an early bedtime, but rather her inability to come up with a good reason that Mum was scared, but Parvati didn't have any reason, good or not.  "I'll leave you alone to wash, okay?"

Outside the bathroom Parvati brushed some of the water off what used to be a good dress robe and rubbed her forehead with a damp hand.  The truth was, she had as many questions as her little sister.  Like where Dad was.  Why did Mum refuse to leave the house?  And where was Padma, and was she ever going to see her again?  Part of Parvati was certainly proud of her twin sister, moving off bravely to use all her skills and talents to fight this war, but the other part wavered between being worried and jealous.  She had no idea where Padma was, or what she was doing, or if she was even alive, in Hogsmeade or Albania or Merlin knows where.  That worried her.  Parvati also knew that was doing absolutely nothing to contribute to this war, while Padma ran around killing Death Eaters and Dean was traveling through Africa and South America, quietly rounding up troops of international witches and wizards for their side.  Even Lavender was busy, helping Madam Pomfrey as she moved from town to town, caring for the wounded, the damaged, the dead.  Lavender was certainly a lot more help than she was, Parvati thought morosely.

The door shuddered against Parvati's back, and Pandita called out, "Parvati!  I'm done!  Open the door and let me out."

"That was fast."  Parvati opened the door and studied her little sister, whose quivering body was wrapped snugly into a wide blue towel with the Ravenclaw crest on it.  "Are you sure you washed good everywhere?"

"Yeah."

"Your back and neck too?"

"Yeah."

"And behind your ears?"

Pandita giggled, sounding more like a ten-year-old for the first time all night.  "Parvati, don't be silly.  Only in books people have to wash behind their ears."

"What kind of books have you been reading?"  Parvati shooed her sister into her bedroom and closed the door, checking out of habit to make sure that all the windows were locked and the glass reinforced with Unbreakable spells.  Mum had insisted, and Parvati hadn't asked why.

"I don't know.  Something about a Muggle boy named Almanzo.  I found it on Mum's bookshelf."  Pandita rooted through the pile of blankets and sheets and pillows and stuffed animals that she liked to think of as her bed and unearthed a pair of rumpled pink cotton pajamas.  "Will you read me some of it?"

"I didn't know Mum had Muggle books."

"Yeah, some.  They're really old, though.  I don't think she got 'em from Flourish and Blotts."  Pandita plowed a path through the piles of cloth, making a small nest for herself and a larger one for her sister.  "Parvati, if I ever get to go to Hogwarts, will I go buy my books at Flourish and Blotts?"

"Yep.  Just the schoolbooks, though.  You can bring your own books from home."

"Is there a library?"

"Yep."  Parvati scratched the top of her little sister's head, like a kitten.  "If you ever go to Hogwarts, what house do you think you'll be in?"

Pandita considered, sucking the end of her finger in her mouth while she fumbled under the covers for her book.  "I don't know.  Maybe in Ravenclaw.  I like to read.  Am I smart, Parvati?"

"I think you're very smart."

"Am I as smart as Padma?"

"Well, maybe not.  But we're five years older than you, Pandi, so we've learned a lot more.  That doesn't mean Padma's smarter."

"Will I be as pretty as you?"

Parvati watched her little sister for a moment, but the dark brown eyes were serious.  Touched, Parvati gave her a hug.  "I think you're going to be much, much prettier when you grow up."

"I want to grow up _now_."  Pandita gave her a mournful stare.  "Do you think I'll make a best friend at Hogwarts?"

"I thought you were best friends with Gillian Dobbs."

"But what if we're not in the same house?"

"Then you might make a best friend in the same house."

"Is that how come you're best friends with Lavender and not Pansy Parkinson anymore?"

Parvati sighed.  "Where'd you get an idea like that?"  She moved to give Pandita another patronizing pat on the head, but the younger girl clearly had no desire to be petted like a puppy, and she moved out of Parvati's arm-reach, making a face.  "I'm not friends with Pansy Parkinson anymore because – well, we just do different things now.  Part of it might be that we're in different houses, but even before we left for Hogwarts and got Sorted, we weren't talking much."

"Oh."  Pandita flipped through the pages of the book so that it made a whirring sound between her fingers.  "Is it 'cause she's a Death Eater now?"

Her sister sighed again.  "Pandi, no one knows who's a Death Eater and who's not.  It's not fair to make accusations like that.  All we can do now is try to help people – "

"Just like Padma's doing.  I should be so proud of Padma.  I should think about other people and not just myself.  I know, I know."  It was Pandita's turn to sigh deeply.  "Mum keeps telling me that I need to always be careful.  But I don't know what I'm s'posed to be careful of."

"You need to be careful of everything these days, Pandi."  Parvati managed a quick pat on the little girl's bony, winglike shoulder before she shrugged away, looking as prickly as a teenager.  "Now, do you want to read with me?"

"_No_.  I wanna talk."

"Well, what do you want to talk about?"

"I don't know."  Pandita shoved her finger back in her mouth and shrugged.

"Well, if you don't know, then how am I supposed to know what you want to talk about?"  Parvati jerked the book from her sister's hands and lifted her wand, grumbling "_Priori pagina_" in a less-than-pleased voice, so that the soft-covered yellow book flipped open to the correct place.  "Chapter 7:  Saturday Night."  She began reading about milkpails and fried doughnuts in the home of a long-ago Muggle boy, and as her voice spun out stories of smashed icicles and bathwater in a wooden tub, it softened until it wrapped both herself and her little sister in a blanket of comfort.  When she finished the chapter she gave Pandita a spontaneous hug.  "Come on, let's give you a makeover."

"A makeover?"

"Yeah.  You know, the thing that I used to do with you on Saturdays?"

"But it's my bedtime," Pandita reminded her sister uncertainly.  "And Mum'll be in a row."

"Pandita!"  Parvati gave the little girl a good-natured shove.  "You've never worried about your bedtime before!"  Sometimes, she reflected as she slid off the bed and used _Accio_ to bring a makeup kit, three hairbrushes, a comb, and twenty-seven bobby pins onto the bed, Pandita was a lot more like Padma than she wanted to be.  Their little sister had always followed Parvati around the neighborhood, tagging after her and Pansy and Lisa Turpin, but there was a lot of Parvati's twin in her, too.

"What are you going to do to my hair?" Pandita asked excitedly, wriggling around like a rubber cauldron so that Parvati could capture the swish of her long black hair in her slim hands.

"Well, nothing just yet.  It's still too damp."  Parvati gave her sister's head a pat and mentally flicked through her internal _Wand-Holder's Guide to Creative Cosmetics_, trying to decide if she needed to use a hair-drying spell.  She had mastered _Therma__ capillus_ just after her twelfth birthday, an accomplishment that Padma joked about for weeks.  Of course, Padma had received a trilogy of Muggle plays by some old dead guy named Sophocles that year, which she seemed to think was much more distinguished reading, and Parvati teased her right back about getting entertainment from the story of some guy having an Edison complex ("It's _Oedipal_, Parvati, you see") – that seemed like so long ago.  An entire lifetime.

Pandita turned around and gave her sister a serious, questioning look with her deep-set, almond-shaped eyes, and Parvati was struck by how much she had grown up ever since the days when she and Gillian followed her around like a rogue Bludger.  Maybe that _was_ an entire lifetime ago.

"I'm going to do your makeup first," Parvati decided, undoing the metal clip on the cosmetic box.  "Do you want to look really, really beautiful, or just do it for fun?"

Pandita considered for a moment.  "Something nice," she said at last.  "No Gryffindor-red butterflies this time, okay, Parvati?  Maybe we can take a picture and send it to Padma."

"Maybe."  Parvati pulled out a container of foundation, decided that she didn't quite like the colour for Pandita's flawlessly olive-and-cream complexion, and poked the container with her wand to dilute it slightly.  She decided not to remind Pandita that not only did they not have any idea where Padma was, but that she was unowlable as well.  If they needed to get a desperate message to her, they could always contact Dumbledore, but somehow she didn't think that Makeover Night #359 in the Patil house qualified as desperate.  "Mm.  This is a good colour on you, Pandi.  You're going to have really pretty skin when you're a teenager."

"Do I have ugly skin now?" Pandita asked anxiously.

"No.  I mean, I think yours is going to stay that way.  You're lucky."  Parvati finished smoothing the foundation over Pandita's face.  "Close your eyes.  I'm going to spread it."  Pandita squeezed them shut, looking like she expected to sneeze at any moment, and Parvati poked her nose with her wand.  "_Pando__ facie_.  Oh, that looks good, Pandita.  That spell was made for you."  She considered colours of blush.  "Are you sad that you don't get to go to Hogwarts?"

"Mm hm."  Pandita tried to speak without moving her lips, even though Parvati was just working on her cheekbones, which were so much more well-defined than Parvati's.  "I wish this war wasn't right now."

"Me too."  Parvati reached for a quill that had a blood-red substance running through the vein and began to outline her sister's lips.  "I wish I could do something to help."

"Like Padma?"

Parvati shook her head.  "Don't talk.  You just made me mess up.  _Deleo__ coloris_."  She gave the quill a quick shake, then returned to tracing the full mouth.  "Yes, like Padma.  She's doing important things out there and I'm stuck at – I mean, I'm not," she amended hastily.  She certainly didn't want Pandita to think that she didn't enjoy being with her.  "It's hard to be the Ravenclaw Prefect's twin sister, you know?"

"But you're not in the same house," Pandita reminded her, then smushed her lips together quickly to stop herself from talking.

As if Parvati could forget.  She nodded and picked up a smaller eyelining quill.  "True.  Still, it's …"  She shrugged, unable to put it into words that her little sister would understand.

"Padma's really smart," Pandita said unexpectedly, sounding very much like she _did_ understand.  "Sometimes I wish she wasn't my sister."

"What do you mean?"  Parvati put her hand on the top of Pandita's head and held it level.  "Close your eyes while you talk."

"I mean."  Pandita struggled to formulate thoughts without fluttering her eyelids.  "Sometimes, you know, in school and stuff, everyone talks about how smart she is, and I should be too.  I mean, I _like_ her.  She's my sister.  But I don't want to be like her."

"Open your eyes.  Let me see."  Parvati checked the lines of deep mocha that she had drawn above the roots of her sister's eyelashes and nodded critically.  "Yeah, I know what you mean, Pandi.  I'm glad we're in different houses at Hogwarts.  Even though I'm not sure why."

"Whaddayou mean?"

"Well, I know why Padma's in Ravenclaw.  She's smart, she likes to be right and do the right thing.  That's why she's an Auror now."  Parvati chose a deep cream-coloured eyeshadow and added a few sparks of brown from the end of her wand.  "I don't know why I'm in Gryffindor."

"'Cause you're brave," Pandita replied matter-of-factly, sounding surprised that her respected older sister should have to ask.

"Not like Padma."  Parvati drew a tube of garnet lipstick across Pandita's mouth, leaving a dusting of small bloody stars on those little-girl lips.  "No one's brave like Padma."

Pandita shrugged, unconcerned, and turned back around to present her now-dry hair to her sister.  "Maybe you'll find out soon."

Parvati just nodded, knowing that Pandita couldn't see her, and wound a thick rope of silky black strands around her wrist, wondering when her baby sister grew up.


	2. The Redemption of Saturday, Part 2

She tucked Pandita into the midst of her covers – white velvet sheets, and a bedspread made of Ravenclaw and Gryffindor tapestries sewn together, side by side – and kissed her goodnight, brushing her lips carefully with the grain of Pandita's smoothed-back hair.  Her sister had been so happy with the results of the intricate French twist, something that Lavender had tried once on Parvati and proclaimed "perfect for Patil hair", that she didn't want to take it out to go to sleep.  Parvati had her doubts about whether the hairdo would last until morning, but she just smiled and nodded and pulled the covers up over her tiny sister, clad in her pink cotton pajamas.

Once Pandita's breathing was rising and falling softly like the rush of wind in the trees above the house, Parvati tucked her wand inside the pocket of her battered dress robe and slipped downstairs to find her mother.  Mum was sitting in a chair by the fire, which was blazing softly, sounding like Pandita in sleep.  Her bony white fingers were wrapped around a mug of cocoa, and Parvati could smell the generous splash of Butterbeer that had been added to the hot drink.  She skidded to an awkward stop next to Mum.  "Hi."

"Hello, Parvati."

"I put Pandita to bed."  Mum didn't say anything.  "I gave her a bath and we spent some time together.  I read to her – "

"That's nice, Parvati.  Did you check to make sure her windows were locked?"

"Yes, when she got dressed."

"Did you use _Aromohola maxima_?"

"Yes." Parvati rubbed her itchy palms against her robe.  "I think we had a fun Saturday again together.  She misses that."

"I'm sure she does."

Mum seemed to have missed the point.  If there was a point at all.  Parvati stopped briefly to think about that.  Had she intended to make a slightly needling comment to her mother, or had her accusation been neatly veiled in truth, like a bride's last-minute stress zits hidden behind a sheath of white?  "I didn't know you had Muggle books."

That did it.  Mum jumped about six feet in the air, levitated briefly so that she was eye-level with the top of the windows, and then performed a half-scrambling flip in the air, so that she landed unceremoniously on the floor.  Their wizened old house-elf, Gilgy, appeared in the blink of an eyelash and helped Mum to her feet.  Mum gave the 246-year-old elf a distracted pat on the head.  "What did you say, Parvati?"

"I said, I didn't know you had Muggle books."  Parvati narrowed her slanted cat-like eyes and studied the book Mum was reading right now.  No, it wasn't a Muggle text; this was the international bestseller _Who__ Am I?_ by Gilderoy Lockhart, which Padma had bought for Mum for her birthday while they were in their third year.  "I read part of one to Pandita."

"Oh, of course.  Yes, she seems to enjoy them.  That's nice, isn't it?  So very nice.  Why are you standing there, Parvati?  What do you want?"

"Nothing really."  Parvati sat down on the floor next to her mother's velvet rocking chair, surprised.  "I just thought I'd come in and talk."

"Oh.  Well, I really have nothing to talk about.  Go to bed and make sure to check your own windows, do you hear me, Parvati?  Double-check on Pandita for me, please."

"Mum?"  Parvati chewed on her fingernail the way she _never_ would have done if she were at Hogwarts and this was a normal Saturday night:  she and Lavender, lots of hot apple cider, six back issues of _Cosmowitchitan_, and some new colours of nail varnish, carefully deliberated over and purchased in Hogsmeade.  The fact was, though, that Lavender wasn't here and no one cared about nail varnish anymore.  She wasn't at Hogwarts and this wasn't a normal Saturday night.  None of them were, anymore.

"If you're heading out to the kitchen, you might Banish a bottle of Butterbeer out here.  I think there's part of a bottle left on the counter."

"Mum!"  Parvati slapped her hand against the side of her mother's chair, unable to stand one more word in that bustling, practical tone, which in itself was so unlike Mum.  _Dad_ was the one who thought business and was forever coming home and telling his three girls to finish their coursework, a busy man who always looked so surprised to find that he had three daughters who didn't care about whether the next day's special should be red or yellow curry.  Mum was never like that.  Her whole being was wrapped up in making sure that her children went to the neatest places and had the most fun.  _No_, Parvati told herself fiercely.  _Mum still _is_ never like that._

"What is it?"  Parvati struggled to find the same even, low-pitched tone that Padma used when she was trying to hold a civilized debate, but it was a very difficult struggle.  For the hundredth – no, the _millionth_, at least – time she wondered how Padma could possibly remain so calm and rational and _she_, who shared the same blood as Padma, could not.  "What's wrong?  Won't you tell me?  I know something is, I can tell."

Mum turned the page, from which a full-plate colour photo of Gilderoy Lockhart tested a charming smile in her direction, and from the purse of her full lips that looked like Pandita's, Parvati wondered if her mother was about to tell her the truth.  Then the lips smashed together, and Mum just said, "Nothing is wrong, Parvati.  Please go check on Pandita, okay?"

Parvati waited a moment while Lockhart got tired of beaming his even white toothies at her mother's haggard face and turned his full-watt gaze to Parvati.  When she knew that her mother was going to remain tight-cheeked and white-faced she got to her feet, headed into the kitchen, Banished the requested bottle of Triple-Strength Butterbeer into the library room, and walked back upstairs.  Gilgy caught up with her when she was halfway to the second floor and asked if he should go check on Miss Pandita ("You is going to look-see on the little one, Miss Parvati?  You is wanting me to look-see, if you please?" in his squeaky old rasp), but Parvati shook her head, no.  She could do that much, since it seemed there was no one left to talk to and no one to listen to.

She knocked on Pandita's door and waited for a moment, hearing no movement or stirring inside.  She wondered if her little sister was asleep already.  Despite Pandita's strangely newfound wisdom, and her almost tangible desire to be a grown-up, she still slept like a kid:  hard, deeply, immediately.  When they were younger Parvati used to be able to put her down to bed and recite less than half of the Muggle book _Goodnight Moon_ before the little girl would be asleep.  Sometimes she just sat on Pandita's bedside and mumbled without really saying anything of meaning, which she felt guilty about sometimes, since she usually liked to read and tell stories, but Pandita never seemed to notice, she just felt right asleep with her head buried deep in the velvety pillow anyway …

The pillow was empty.

Parvati blinked a few times, then shook her head.  No, that was impossible.  Where had she gone, if the pillow was empty?  She must be curled up near the foot of her small bed.

The ten-and-three-quarter-inch mangrove-and-unicorn-hair wand came out of its pocket deep inside her pink dress robe, and she whispered, "_Lumos_."  A single spark fell from the end of her torch and sizzled on the empty bed.

Parvati Patil, age sixteen, did not think.  She did not stop to think, or to scream for her mother, or for Gilgy.  She pointed her wand firmly at the bed and hissed "_Priori performo_!" – and then she was flying, flying far out and away, with her eyes shut, through the broken window that could not, not even with _Aromohola maxima_, protect her little sister.


	3. The Redemption of Saturday, Part 3

She landed hard on her side, her wrist and arms taking the brunt of the fall, stretched out in front of her like a Seeker going into a free-for-all dive for the Snitch.  Parvati flinched as she rolled onto her hip, assuming a half-sitting position that let her turn her hands over to see how much damage had been done.  She remembered Mum's stories from her gladiating days, when she used to ride and train hippogriffs for a type of racing on an airborne track, and Mum always told them that if you were going to fall, you should tuck your head and take the brunt of the impact on your shoulder.  She had obviously forgotten about that, Parvati thought, wincing.  She plunged one hand, with its mosaic of gravel and dirt and blood dotting her palm, inside her robe and mumbled a half-hearted healing spell.  It only got some of the dust and ragged skin off her hands, but it was good enough that it didn't hurt.

Parvati got to her feet, shaking her stinging palms so that little sprays of red, like tiny flowers, were left on her robe, then looked around uncertainly.  She had no idea where she was, or even why she was here – well, aside from the obvious, of course.  _Priori performo_ was an incredibly handy spell that she and Lavender used most often when they couldn't decide whether they preferred this shade of eye shadow or the last one, and _priori performo_ cast the last spell used on the subject's face – or, in this case, bed.  With all three-point-seven seconds of thought that Parvati had put into it, it had seemed like a good way to figure out where Pandita had gone.  But in retrospect, she decided that it had not been the most brilliant idea ever to occur to her in her sixteen years.

_Padma would have known what to do_, Parvati reflected wryly as she turned around in a slow, tentative circle, trying to absorb as many landmarks of the unfamiliar scenery as she could.  _Padma always knows what to do.  I suppose she wouldn't have used the first spell that came into her head, either_.

She laid her wand flat on her hand and said, "Point me."  The golden-brown wand spun around a few times in a blurry circle, then settled on a direction between her thumb and index finger.  That was north, then, which was nice, but didn't help much.  Parvati had no idea where she was, so knowing which way was north meant about as much as knowing some sodding spell that only Hermione Granger would learn.

Parvati was suddenly aware that she was standing in the middle of a battled-scarred field, with very few shrubs or bushes, and only the barest amount of ragged grass crunching to death under her feet.  She wasn't sure why that made her uneasy, but she felt very unprotected – and slightly stupid – standing in a destroyed meadow trying to get her bearings.  Cautiously she made her way to a scattering of immature trees off to the northeast.  Above her head the leafless branches rattled together in hollow vibration, and the clattering reminded her inexplicably of bare bones.

From her meager shelter amid the trees, the field looked even more desolate.  A light wind, slow and gentle but so cold that it felt like ice against her neck, lifted some dead grass and dirt and swirled it off in a haze to the north.  The air smelled unnatural, like an old fire, and sickly-sweet treacle tart, and a coppery scent, like – 

Parvati remembered, suddenly, Lavender's first and only owl to her since she had joined Pomfrey in the fields, right before the Patils made their house unowlable to protect Padma.

_So many bodies, Parv, dead people and animals, not just wizards but Muggles too, pets and even Death Eaters.  Walking around trying to find pulses.  Madame Pomfrey is trying to create a spell that will heal en masse, but it has to only work for the people fighting on our side.  Do you remember in Muggle Studies, learning about the Viet-nam War?  That's what this is like.  Bodies just left in the middle of a field._

_Sometimes I think I'm getting the Gift, Parv, I think I can see the future.  Without tea leaves, though, I don't need them anymore.  I can See but I'm just so scared of finding everyone I know on a field like this …_

_Wherever I go, no matter what, I smell blood.  It smells like copper.  It doesn't matter if there are no bodies around, I smell it all the time._

– like _blood_.__

Parvati shivered.  For a moment she hugged herself, burying her chin in the smooth collar of her robe, wanting nothing more than to be tucked into bed with a steaming mug of hot cocoa and some chocolate frogs, reading to her little sister.  Wherever she had followed Pandita, it was not a good place.

And then she pulled herself together, or at least buttoned her lip against her teeth, and started off through the trees.

Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be much in any direction she walked.  Parvati tried moving first to the right, then the left, but all the trees looked the same, the wind came from the same direction every time she turned around, and in fact she had the distinct feeling that something was wrong in her head, perhaps she didn't know how to perceive different directions, or she was just getting turned around without realizing it.  Her wand weighed heavy in her fingers, leaving the smooth indentations of mangrove wood on the pads of her thumb and forefinger, but she held it up bravely so that the beam cast bouncing shadows down near her toes.  She wanted to call out to Pandita, but she sensed, with the kind of Gift Trelawney had never told them about in class, that it would be just as stupid as everything else she had done tonight.

By the time Parvati reached the sixteenth clump of trees that looked just like the first group she had taken refuge under, her calves ached under her robe and stung more blindingly than her palms.  She still had no idea where she was, or if she was back where she started.  And it didn't look like England or Scotland, either.  The emptiness and the chill reminded her of – she struggled to remember something, anything, from Muggle Studies – maybe Russia?

The faintest flash of white in the forest to her left made her whip around, long black hair hanging straight against one ruddy cheek, and the beam from her wand jumped against the warped leathery bark of the trees.  "Hello?" she called softly, biting her once-lipsticked lip between her teeth.  "Is anyone there?"

No answer.  Parvati took a deep breath, mumbled "Nox" so she was plunged into uncanny blackness, then started off to the left, feeling rather blindly with her feet.  Briefly she remembered her kitten Nandin, and wished he were still alive so that she could have his sense of vision.

When Parvati reached another clearing, which she sensed because of the change in the air and not with her still-poorly-adjusted vision, her breath caught between her vocal cords and she emitted an involuntary kitten-mew of fear.

A neat, wide circle of wizards in black robes took up the entire clearing.  They were spaced barely six inches apart, but there were so many of them that Parvati could barely see the men on the other side of the circle.  She squinted, trying in vain to focus.  About all her knowledge of math came from being yelled at by Snape in Potions for adding too much Asiatic sea root to the six chopped aconite leaves, but she estimated that there must be eighty or ninety Death Eaters – she knew with a sudden, stomach-jerking chill that they were Death Eaters, for when one of them raised his left arm, long black wand held high in his fingers, she saw the momentary flash of a black Mark on his skin.

In the middle of the circle were several bound figures in brightly-colored robes that contrasted sharply with the unerring black of the Death Eaters.  Parvati studied them, straining her eyes as much as she could.  There were two adult wizards, three young wizards about her age, two small boys, and a little girl.  None of them looked familiar.

She remembered how Lavender had written, _I've been lucky so far.  All this caring-for-the-wounded.  I haven't seen anyone I know – or maybe I just don't want to see them._

She studied the little girl in the center of the circle and the loss of her luck smacked her like the Cruciatus curse between her eyes.

Parvati didn't have the wits to mumble a silencing spell, so she clapped one dusty, bloody hand over her face and bit down hard on her own skin to keep herself from screaming.  She would have recognized the small figure with a waterfall of witchy black hair and pink cotton pajamas if she'd been blind.

She tried to remember how to breathe, but suddenly all the things she knew – how to do her hair, how to flutter her eyelashes and flirt with a boy, even how to narrow her almond-shaped brown eyes so that she could read the tea leaves in Divination – nothing she knew seemed to give her the strength to tell her what to do now.

Terrfieid now, she wondered what to do.  She watched the Death Eater with his arm raised as he flicked his wand – _his left hand must be his wand hand_, she realized inanely, she could still see the fabled Mark flashing as his black sleeves fell down his arm.  One of the little boys in the center of the circle levitated in the air; then abruptly the ropes slid from his body, falling onto the ground with a soft puff of brown dust, and the other Death Eaters raised their wands expectantly.  She saw the flashes of white teeth and glittering eyes that made them look painfully like a group of little kids just given a new toy – and then she understood that was what it was, because the little boy began to bounce through the air, like a twisted game of soccer (which Dean had explained to her many times, but she still didn't quite understand) played with only the flicks of wands in the air.

Parvati Patil wanted to scream.  She wanted to cry.  She wanted to throw up.

She was afraid that she was going to do all three at once when a rustling sound behind her put her on her guard.  Her wand came out of her robe, trembling between unsteady fingers, and she knew that she was sending curses of Gryffindor crimson and gold every direction she could, but they must not be working, because there were hands – first against her shoulders – then her mouth – and then another body against hers, shoving her down to the forest floor -

"_Parvati_?"

Parvati's arm, which was twisted behind her back in a vain attempt to curse the person who was sitting on her spine, flopped to the ground at the sound of a familiar, if flabbergasted, voice.  "Uh – Hermione?"

"Erm … yeah."  The pressure eased off Parvati's spine, and after a minute the highly uncomfortable sensation of Hermione's wand poking into her neck disappeared too.  "Well, get up!  What the bloody hell are you doing here, Parvati?"

"I was – I was looking – my sister, my little sister, we – oh, Merlin, she's out there!  We have to go!  Hermione, please, we have to go!"  Parvati scrambled to her feet so fast that she tripped over the hem of her robe and ended up in a sprawled heap on the ground again; Hermione rolled her eyes and offered one bony hand to help her up.  Parvati either didn't notice or didn't need any help.  "We have to go get her!  We have to get her!  We have to – "

She didn't realized that she was running until she heard Hermione say softly, "_Petrificus Totalus_."  For a moment she wondered why she wasn't going anywhere, and then she wondered why she felt so suddenly weightless and heavy at the same time, and then she realized that she was lying on the ground again, unable to do anything but blink nervously up at Hermione's serious face.  Parvati tried to say something, tried to make Hermione understand how important it was for them to go out there and save Pandita – her little sister – but her lips wouldn't move.  Only her eyes, which strained as they fastened onto Hermione's face in the dark.

"Parvati, we can't go out there," Hermione said briskly, sensibly, sounding as infuriatingly know-it-all as she usually did in Transfiguration, or Herbology, or History of Magic.  "Do you have _any_ idea where you are?  I mean, you _do_ know what they would do to you if you raced in on some secret gathering of Death Eaters?  Frankly, I haven't the foggiest notion how _you_ got here in the first place, _I've_ been tracking the Death Eaters for ages and this is the first time I've broken into their forced-Apparition charms – oh, I'll unbind you.  But you need to promise not to scream or run out there, all right?"  She waited a moment for a blink of assent, then performed the counter-curse, but she didn't drop her wand.  She kept it held high in her fingers, as if ready for whatever Parvati was about to do next.

"We have to go out there," Parvati insisted croakily as soon as she could speak.  "We _have_ to.  She's my sister, do you know what they're doing to those people?"

"Which they will just as easily do to you if you do something foolish like try to save her," Hermione said severely.  For a strange moment Parvati was reminded of Professor McGonagall.  "Parvati, I don't know how much you know about what's going on, but we need to get you out of here quickly – something urgent has come up, and Padma and Dumbledore and I need you right now.  Come _on_,we have to go."

"No," Parvati insisted, planting her feet firmly inside her robe, and suddenly she was aware of how stupid she must look to Hermione, running around in what used to be her best dress robe when Hermione Granger was out fighting a war, just like her twin sister.  "We can't!  I won't leave without Pandita, I can't do that to her!"

"_Quietus_," Hermione said fiercely, aiming her wand at Parvati's throat.  "Look, you brainless excuse for a Gryffindor, didn't you hear a bloody thing I just said?  It's not safe.  We can't do anything.  We need to go!"

"Do you have a little sister?"

"I don't see what my family has anything to do with – "

"You don't, do you?"  It crossed Parvati's mind to wonder how she could never have bothered to ascertain that from Hermione in the five years that they had shared a room, but then Hermione generally took pains to distance herself as far from Lavender and Parvati as she could, short of moving into the Slytherin dungeons.  "Then you _can't_ understand, but I _need_ to help her!  She might die out there, Hermione, she's just a little girl, and they're going to kill her – "

"Parvati, it's no safer for you than for her.  _Do you understand_?  You can't do anything to help her."

"What do you mean?" Parvati asked absently, yanking away from Hermione's iron-clad grip on the sleeve of her robe.  If she stuck her head out around that tree, she could just see Pandita, who looked so small, and yet, oddly, not as scared as Parvati would have thought she would be …

"Don't act so bloody daft."

Parvati felt Hermione's hand latch back onto her arm, and she jerked it away again.  If she moved a little, she could see Pandita's hands, where they were tied tightly behind her back.  Her small chest was rising and falling rapidly under her pajama top.  "I am _not_ acting 'bloody daft,' as you put it, you blasted know-it-all.  Look, if you know so much, help me figure out how to get my sister."

"Parvati."  Hermione took another step forward to follow her again, and this time her hand was gentle but heavy on Parvati's shoulder.  "I can't help you.  We need to leave _now_.  We need to get out before they find us too."

"I won't leave without my sister!" Parvati shrieked.

She felt a small hand with tense, strong fingers clap over her mouth as a few of the Death Eaters turned and glanced into their clearing.  She could smell the dusty scent of Hermione's curls and the muffled saltiness of sweat on Hermione's palm, and under all that, still that coppery smell that had tinged this place ever since she followed her baby sister here.

The Death Eaters who had heard her scream were moving now, and Hermione was dragging her back into the woods, and then she could feel herself rushing through the air with a little _pop_ like her ears were exploding.  _So this is Apparating_.  And before all her consciousness left the coppery forest where she had been, she heard a little girl's keening cry, and the sound of ripping cotton cloth, and Parvati closed her eyes and threw up into the darkness.


	4. The Redemption of Saturday, Part 4

Parvati understood that Apparating meant disappearing and reappearing almost instantly in another place, and that the journey couldn't take more than a fraction of a second, but by the time she felt a kitchen chair being shoved under her tired body, she felt like she had traveled to the ends of the sky and back again.  She felt Hermione take her hand away from her mouth, and in the suddenly-bright light of the kitchen she blinked several times, trying to get her wits back about her.  She could see Mum, looking so very pale under the smooth olive tan of her skin, and red-headed, lanky Ron Weasley, who was Hermione's boyfriend, and – a girl with long glossy black hair and oval brown eyes.  "_Pandita_?"

"Someone get her some cocoa.  She's out of it," Parvati heard Hermione say, and the black-haired girl leaned closer to her.  "Parvati, it's me, Padma.  Are you okay?"

_Padma_.  Her twin sister … Parvati blinked again, and suddenly the memory of everything that had happened in the desolate forest with its cold wind and copper smells slapped her hard across the face.  "Padma!  Bloody hell, what's going on?  I – Pandita was gone – and I followed – she's – she was – I found her, I found her, I _found_ her …"  She didn't realize she was crying until a warm cinnamon-smelling cloth was pressed against her cheeks and nose and eyes, and she sputtered and garbled into the handkerchief.  "She's out there, they're going to – they're – "

"I know."  Parvati felt the pressure of a hand that was the exact same size and shape and colour as hers, and then a mug of warm brown liquid was being shoved against her lips.  "Parvati, drink this, you'll feel better.  Now, do you hear me, I know.  I know about Pandita."

"And you're just standing there?!"  Parvati smacked wildly against Padma's hand and the mug of cocoa, and Ron levitated the cup before it could go spilling and smashing all over the floor.  "Well, don't just do something, stand there!  We have to go get her!"

"Bloody hell."  Parvati felt herself being shoved back in the chair, and in a moment Padma was sitting on her legs so she couldn't leap across the kitchen.  "Parvati, you need to listen to me.  We can't do anything for Pandita.  I'm sorry, but we can't.  Right now there's something more important, do you understand?"  Parvati thought she was speaking very slowly.  She frowned, and the skin on her forehead knit itself together the way it wasn't supposed to, you'd get wrinkles.  "Hermione has discovered a spell that could defeat – er – Voldemort-sorry-Ron," she said in a rush.  "It has to do with blood.  Dumbledore and the members of the Order need someone to test it on.  Do you understand?  Nod your head."  Parvati shook her head.  "They need someone to test it, two people who share the same blood."

"The same blood," Parvati repeated slowly.  "The same …"  She swallowed hard, and suddenly the kitchen was so bright, and her head hurt so much, her head and her back and her hands where she had never really managed to heal them, and she hurt with the knowledge of what Padma was saying.  "Twins," she said finally, beginning to understand.

"Yes, twins," Padma replied, sounding very relieved that finally her twin sister had proven they had roughly the same amount of brains.  "We're all Apparating to Hogwarts now.  One of us will take you, since you don't have your Apparating license yet."  Parvati wondered, briefly, how her sister could still think of things like the Ministry of Magic and Apparition licenses.  "We'll explain it when we get there."

"Erm.  Sure."  Parvati fidgeted a little, because Padma was still sitting on her and it was getting uncomfortable.  "Are we going now?"

"Yes."

She never thought to ask what kind of testing this was going to be, until she remembered what Padma had said about two people who shared the same blood.  When they got to Hogwarts, she turned toward her twin sister, but Padma had already rushed off to find Dumbledore.  "Hermione?" she said quietly, turning to the other girl and trying to ignore the fact that Ron was holding her quietly, brushing at her hair and the invisible tears on her cheeks, "what's going to happen?"

Hermione refused to look at her, brown eyes sliding off Parvati's deadened gaze.  "One of you," she said finally, speaking more to Ron's chest than Parvati, "has to die."

* * *

When Dumbledore finally arrived, looking old and tired and lined with a great more many wrinkles than Parvati remembered (she also remembered, how she and Lavender used to giggle about making a Wrinkle-Away potion for him, as an anonymous Christmas present, and how they used to giggle, how it was so much easier to giggle years ago), she almost burst into tears at the proud, solemn look in his once-twinkling blue eyes.  She thought of that look, the one she had seen at every Hogwarts Leaving Feast in her first five years of school, but it was usually directed toward Harry Potter or Ron or Hermione, never at her.  She wondered why this had to be the first, and last, time she would ever see it.

"Miss Patil," Dumbledore said softly, and then hastened to correct himself, apparently remembering that there were two Miss Patils standing in front of him, "Parvati.  Thank you for coming on such short notice.  Your sister has made me aware of – er – the difficult things you have endured tonight.  You have my sympathies."

I don't need your bloody sympathies, was on the tip of Parvati's tongue, but she managed – with great force, and by gritting her teeth very loudly – to hold it in.  Instead she said, "Thank you, sir."

"You realize," Dumbledore continued, "that the sacrifice we are asking of you is not an easy one, Parvati.  Many of your friends and fellow students and even your sister have been contributing to this war, but never in a way quite as explicit as this one."  He hesitated, and his eyes too slipped away from Parvati's, if only momentarily.  "Each one knows that he might die.  None are _asked_ to die."

"I understand."

"And we would understand, of course, if you were not prepared to give up your life."

This time it was Parvati's turn to look away, to cast a long and blurry gaze onto the stone floor, as if it might give her an answer.  Dumbledore was offering her the chance to be selfish and keep her life – for what?  To sit at home and Banish bottle after bottle of Triple-Strength Butterbeer to her mother to her let drown her sorrows?  To sit at home and wait for her father to return from Merlin knows where? – letting her know that none of them would blame her.  Perhaps it was everyone's biggest instinct, to live.

She thought of her mother, who would sit at home and read without really seeing the words, waiting for her father, who might never come home.  She thought of her twin sister, who would hold her chin high and walk back out onto the copper battlefields to fight and kill and perhaps save some lives too, and maybe years later would think about the two sisters whom she had to sacrifice in this war.

She thought of her baby sister, the little girl who was forced to grow up much too soon in the last minutes of her life, and the sacrifice that Pandita Patil had made – for her, and for Padma, and for the Order, even if she was never _asked_ to die.

And Pandita's oldest sister looked straight into blue eyes that seemed, perhaps, a little deader than her own and said, "I am."

* * *

It took almost a week to complete the combination potion and spell.  Part of the problem, Hermione explain tensely, while she stirred the cauldron and waited for it to explode four times and then simmer down, was now that Snape was dead – at that, she had to take a deep breath, and then she never continued, her eyes shadowed.

Parvati simply nodded, standing next to Hermione and watching her brew her death.

"Do I have to drink it?" she asked curiously one day, watching Hermione make the third batch (the first two had failed miserably, turning a rather sickly bile colour when they were supposed to be black) more out of honest inquisitiveness than any morbid fascination.  "How do you expect You-Know-Who to die from it if he has to _drink_ it?"

"You don't have to drink it," Hermione replied.  "Your, um, sister does.  Then we saw the spell and it affects everyone who shares the same blood as Padma."

"So that means Harry has to drink it."

"If it works."  Hermione glanced at the hourglass next to the cauldron and began stirring again.

"And there's an antidote?"

"Yes."

"For the person who drinks it."

"Yes."

"I guess you wouldn't want an antidote for You-Know-Who anyway."

"Hmm," was all Hermione said, either missing the attempt at humour or choosing to ignore it entirely.  "Will you stir that while you count to three-hundred-twenty-two?"

After that, Parvati decided not to say much, except that "it's frothing now" and "I think it sounds angry enough, don't you?"  Hermione didn't seem to mind; in fact, she seemed to welcome Parvati's silence, the way she usually had during those five years that they roomed together ("Honestly, you pathetic, brainless, Trelawney-drooling idiots, can't you take your bloody Trelawney drooling to some other room, like, say, the bathroom, so I can get some real bloody _work_ done here?").

But afterward, when Hermione and Dumbledore and McGonagall had gotten the potion to turn an angry blue, then fade to a slick black like tar; when they had figured out the right way to pronounce "_Patie__ tumor cerebelli_"; when Padma had swallowed the last drop of a goblet full of the thick black liquid; when they had cast the spell, in shaking voices and with shaking wands held between shaking fingers; when Parvati finally began to feel the cancer spreading through the synapses of her brain, their gift to her and her gift to them – she sat down, and stayed with Parvati, and talked.

* * *

"Were you close to your sister?"

"Very.  We were always close."

"Why you and not Padma?"

"Why me and not Padma what?" Parvati replied slowly.  She was finding that the bigger the tumor wrapping around her cerebellum, the longer it took her to do most things.  Mostly it had to do with motor control.  She wasn't very good at blinking, or waving, or looking down at her watch anymore.  But she could usually still talk, unless something wasn't clear to her.  "Why I was close to Pandita and Padma wasn't, you mean?"

"Yes."

Parvati thought about that for a while, with what part of her brain was still hers.  "I'm not sure.  I guess because – well, Padma was always reading or something.  It's not much fun to tag around after your big sister when she's sitting on her bed reading a book.  So Pandita always followed me and my friends around."

"What did she do with you?"

"Everything.  Swimming, sledding, just playing.  We gave her makeovers and did her hair.  We put nail varnish on her when she was three and Mum and I had a terrific row about you."

"It sounds like fun."

Parvati tried to listen to the nuances of Hermione's voice, but she felt like she was also losing her ability to understand people's emotions when she couldn't see and talk to them at the same time.  "It was."

"I wish I'd had a brother or a sister or something," Hermione admitted softly, sounding contemplative.  Or maybe Parvati was just making that up in her head.  Maybe Hermione really sounded airy and disgusted, because Parvati couldn't tell the difference.  "When I die, my parents are going to be all alone, you know."

"Children usually outlive their parents," Parvati parroted some book that Padma had probably read over the years, and then realized how absolutely raving mad that was.

"I meant, when I die in the war."

Parvati didn't have an answer for that, and trying to think of one was going to require enormous amounts of work that she didn't have the energy or the brainpower for.  "Dumbledore is very proud of you," she settled for at last.

If that was a weird answer, Hermione didn't show it.  "Oh, I know.  I was ever so proud when I got my letter, so long ago, and I'm still proud.  I wouldn't have – "  That sounded suspiciously like a sob – "I would rather die now than never have come to Hogwarts in the first place.  It's just – dying.  The dying, it's sad."  She paused for a moment, so long that Parvati could hear her breathing match time with Hermione's.  "Parvati, why did you choose to do this?"

"Do?"

"To – this.  To do this test."

Parvati tried to think about that, too, but it seemed impossible.  "Because I let my little sister die," she mumbled sleepily, letting her cheek rest on the side of her arm.  "She's dead."

"That's not why."

Despite her absolute exhaustion, her desire to go to sleep until she was sleeping and her body was sleeping and her brain could sleep too, Parvati felt the familiar snap of annoyance that she usually felt around Hermione.  "Oh, yeah?  Then why?"

"You know why."

It was the last thing she remembered Hermione saying.  She must have gone to sleep, because when she woke up the room was empty and the only thing left to record Hermione's presence was a scrap of parchment with her bold, firm-quilled handwriting lying on the dungeon floor next to Parvati's bed. 

Parvati stretched a bit, but couldn't quite reach it.  Her hands were still ragged with blood and dirt from last Saturday, and her fingers were starting to curl, stiffly, from disuse.  Finally she let herself fall from the small bed onto the floor, trying not to care that the sudden motion jarred every nerve from her toes to her nose, certainly not caring that the tumble left another layer of dust on the once-pink, once-dress robe that she was still wearing.

The note was short, and to the point, much the way all of Parvati's conversations with Hermione had been over the last six years.

_Friday morning_

_Parvati__,_

_I have to go – urgent Order business – McGonagall is around, and will be down to see if you need anything over … the last next few days.  Your sister will be fine.  The antidote seems to have worked._

_Thank you._

She finished the note, read it three more times just to make sure she hadn't missed anything (which she often did, in fact sometimes she thought she missed important parts of her dreams, and she seemed to be dreaming more and more – was that an effect of the tumor, too?), and then discarded the note on the floor, next to her nose.  The scent of parchment and ink was very familiar and almost warm in its dryness, nothing like the smell of mold on the dungeon walls or, so far away, a breath of copper in a field where a child lay dying.

Parvati wondered if it was still Friday.  It took her a quarter of an hour, she guessed, but she managed to train her body to turn her wrist over so that she could see the planets clicking around and around the face of the watch Dean had given her to mark their one-year anniversary.  Yes, it was still Friday evening.  Nearly Saturday.  For a moment the memory of Saturdays and sunshine, treats and kittens and sisters, overwhelmed her, and then she remembered her last Saturday with Pandita and knew she would choose to remember the sunny ones first.

She thought she dreamed sometimes, as she died that day, thought she heard voices and saw shapes and smelled things that she had never smelt on earth.  For a moment she swore she felt the weight of a tiny little girl, ten-going-on-eleven-going-on-too-old, in her arms, until she realized that she was hugging only the flatness of cold stone beneath her body.  Other times she caught a whiff of coppery odor and felt the bile threaten to rise through her body, tried not to think about that little girl being spilled with copper from her nose to her thighs.

Sometimes she thought she saw a light, the way wizards always talked about death – a sudden flash of light, like a final goodbye curse – but it never was, sometimes it was her wand, sending out a few last sparks as she took her last breaths, and once it was McGonagall, descending into the dungeons that had always been Snape's domain, coming down to check on her, to feel for a pulse the way Lavender was picking her way across a battlefield right now.  And she cried against cold stone, and wondered if one death justified another, and Parvati died.

_finis___

A/N:  I am very well aware that I rushed the end of this, and I'm not proud of it. A very big part of me wanted to get it posted before _Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix _came out, which was in less than a day by the time I got this posted, and most people probably did not read it before they read _OotP_, but it was the goal that counted in my head. So it's not as polished as Legacy, and also the style is very different. But I enjoyed the challenge with Parvati. In fact, she probably ended up being more of a Mary Sue than Pandita.  At least I think.


End file.
